You know what’s awesome? Collaboration.  For instance, in the co-op house where we’ll be baking this spring lives a homebrew beer enthusiast, one R.  Since baking and brewing often cross paths in the multipurpose ground floor kitchen/basement setup they’ve got (a.k.a the heart of the house) we’ve been passing yeast-related knowledge back and forth.  Today I tested out a bread raised by a starter I made using the ongoing yeast culture that R. uses in all his homebrew batches.  And maybe down the road we’ll try beer brewed with the yeast out of my sourdough mother.

Which, by the way, I have converted to rye.  I like the way it ferments quickly in our cold kitchen and the intense sour flavors it provides.  And it’s super easy to switch back to wheat, or to a different hydration, if I need to.  Did I mention that I’m pretty far down the road to natural yeast snobbishness?  That making bread with instant yeast is starting to feel like cheating?  But I’m nowhere near knowledgeable or experienced enough in bread matters (one year of serious baking!) to be a real militant purist, so no worries.

Anyway, the brewing yeast culture is a perfectly adequate leavener!  Next stop should be to sub in some beer for water in the recipe because this will be baked mostly for beer lovers and nerds, I think.

Okay, hippie overshare time.  Let’s talk about… kombucha.  I’d tried to get mine going after a hiatus and had it grow mold twice.  So I poured off most of the liquid, added cider vinegar, and when I got a chance (today) poured the mother into a bowl and sanitized the glass bottle it sits in with boiling water and dish soap.

Hopefully this time it will *not* mold and I will reap a batch of delicious jasmine kombucha, great for treating SAD, as if that’s needed given the creepy weather that thinks it’s May around here or something.  Maybe I will also remember to check it before it turns into vinegar and I become the only person who will touch it.

One project that did not go according to plan: fixing the busted power cable to my 2004 Powerbook which has been refusing to recharge itself.  But you know, nothing counts as a waste of time when you have a chance to hone your soldering and hot glue gun skills!

I’m resigning myself to the fact that something may be wrong with the little laptop that can’t be fixed on the basement workbench.  It’s so rugged though – I should know, it took enough dives off the coffee table during my school years – and I hate not to get it fixed.

And this is what we’re storing in the bottom of the kitchen armoire.  I did have some suggestions to put linens in there – I wish I had that many tea towels.  Sometime I will have to do a tea towel roundup post because they are the best, most useful, and most beautiful category of thing to keep around the kitchen.

1. Sports

If you know me you know that I’m not really into “the sports” (we had to look up who’s playing in this year’s Super Bowl) but what with that football thing happening today and scoring free tickets to a Bandits game last night, this is probably the most sportful weekend in my recent memory.  The Bandits are our professional men’s lacrosse team, by the way.

I mean, I went to a Bisons game two summers ago and that was good too – they’re our minor league baseball outfit. Maybe sometime I’ll see the Sabres, and MAYBE the Bills. You know the best thing about seeing the Bandits? You can ride the train from Allen St. and it’s free. The other best thing is that everyone gives each other two-handed high fives every time the Bandits score. The whole time there is music blasting, lights flashing, random features on the video screen and basically ample opportunity for sensory overstimulation. The worst thing is that beers are $8.50, but at least tickets are cheap.  And the team is sponsored by something called “Extreme Milk.”

I still haven’t converted to sports fandom in general, and seeing a crowd of 14,000 people going nuts when two lax dudes are beating each other up in an arena is a little weird, but still: the Bandits, my #1 recommended local sport.

2. Building fixing

The back entrance to the building is one of the last surviving bits of unadulterated shoddy workmanship inflicted on the property by its previous owners. So logically K. is attacking it. First, the plastic siding on the front was falling all over the place, so now it’s gone. Second, we had a random interior door stuck on there for a while but now it’s getting a wide exterior door so we can get furniture in and out. Since the array of garden tools and bric a brac cluttering up the space has been banished to the shed, it will be a useful place to keep boots in and move in and out of without dodging a rake that’s trying to put your eye out.

On the outside, there was a crappy electrical outlet that was 1. undependable and 2. inconveniently located. Luckily K. loves rewiring stuff and now the outlet functions and is placed in a much more suitable orientation. AND HE PAINTED EVERYTHING TO MATCH THE EXISTING SIDING. Overachiever. Now our crazy backyard projects will continue to successfully involve power tools and lights.  (You’ll likely surmise that putting siding on the shed will be the next of these projects.)

3. Bread

Fancy & Delicious, my bakery, is kicking itself into gear and preparing for a springtime bread share: three months, $50, 12 loaves of fresh bread baked with love and expertise by yours truly (and friends/bizpartners.) Details on that.

I baked a huge batch of sourdough 80% rye from Jeffrey Hamelman’s foolproof recipe in Bread for last week’s Sunday Soup and Buffalo Barnraisers First Birthday Party. Sunday Soup is a microfundraising model which involves people presenting their community-based projects, a vote, and the winner receiving the total entrance fee from the night.  This Soup’s winner was an urban forest garden project helmed by our buddy C.

The bread was awesome and took three days of carefully monitored souring processes, which entailed bootleg temperature control measures involving a styrofoam cooler and 5-gallon food safe bucket. Since it didn’t have caraway it was more of a sweet, hearty, versatile bread with a complex sour character.

Here it is paired with some strawberry freezer jam from last summer’s BBR jam workshop, and it’s actually that color. It’s super high in sugar and great mixed in with plain yogurt also.  Can’t wait to make a ton of jam once there’s fruit around again.

5. VHS

Want a sustainable media consumption habit? Find a VCR on the side of the road and start buying secondhand VHS.  Salvation Army has the classics, Antique Man in Allentown has the good stuff.

That was our old VHS storage system: all over the place. There was a shelf in the hallway dedicated to videos but it was overflowing and also not anywhere near the VCR/tv. After a little reorganization of the living room post-Christmas tree removal, we had space for a small set of shelves which would be dedicated to video and records.

ET VOILA. On top of the shelves is a wedding present from K’s mom: a hand woven bread basket. She told me it’s one of the trickiest baskets she’s ever made. I’m almost afraid to put any bread in it.

Anyway, marvel at our sweet collection! The only problem is that our tv, also from the curb, has no remote so if the tracking needs adjusting there is just no hope. #trashsourcedproblems

6. Indoor plantery

The kitchen herb garden is growing in leaps and bounds. It’s actually a little too hyper and leggy, probably because the plants have so much nutriment and water right now – herbs like to be a little thirsty and underfed.

The borage in the living room window macrame centerpiece is thriving, mostly due to the addition of worm castings from K’s vermiculture bin in the basement and assiduous watering. It’s flowering, which speaks to the freaky weather we’re having. There’s been no real winter! My car is sinking into the ground because the ground never froze! I’ve been wearing a secondhand fleece all winter and haven’t taken out the puffer jacket once! It ain’t right.

7. Hairdo

I dyed the last inch or so of my hair red, which has faded into pink. Um, there’s really not as much to say about that as I thought there might be? ANYWAY, IT’S STILL THERE.

8. The end

Winter involves a lot of hibernating usually, and even if this one is oddly balmy, I still feel like the stuff I’ve been doing is too minor to post about.  Clearly this was once not the case, since I used to post almost every day about… whatever.  I think I need to start assuming again that people will find the stuff I do interesting, and keep documenting stuff here because it’s a useful space.  Anyway, the roundup putters to a stop, and now it’s time to start psychologically preparing myself for Madonna’s halftime show.

My first exposure to f&d was long before I’d make friends with the people involved.  I stopped by a Really Really Free Market in Bidwell Park with a few friends and f&d had a table giving out samples and hyping their bread share.  The bread was good, I lived nowhere near the East Side, and I filed them away for another time.

Imagine months later when I attend a bread workshop on the Barn Raisers calendar and it’s the same people.  Imagine such a connection that we go out to Nietzsche’s afterwards together.  Imagine being asked to be part of the collective – like, a baking part – and baking bread all summer.  Imagine the departure of both founders and trying to figure out what to do next, honing bread chops all the while.

T. and I are doing a bread share this spring from March to May with the help of some friends.  We are working towards eventually having our own bakery space and pursue in earnest the perfect naturally leavened loaf of affordable bread.

Running your own thing is tough.  It’s going to take time and work to get this thing to a point where it would pay us and others a living wage.  Seeing friends like Good Nature Brewing (congrats guys!) and Rusted Grain start to take off has been very encouraging, just as seeing all of their hard work and logistical gymnastics has been very good as a reality check.

Speaking of Good Nature, I designed their logo.  I just designed a new one for f&d also, based on this gorgeous loaf of olive oil and rosemary bread we made last June:

Yeah.  It’s going to be good to be baking again.

This month I brought THIS:

That luscious unearthly color!  That oddly viscous texture!  A flavor oddly reminiscent of cough medicine?  It could only be… homemade Swedish Fish-flavored vodka.

Before the holidays, K. and I were browsing a liquor store for party supplies and gifts.  This expedition kind of turned into a silent 15-minute gawk at all the booze on offer, which suddenly seemed much more vast and exciting than we’d ever cared to notice (maybe it was the combination of an otherwise dull grey day and some flashy label design?) and my attention was eventually drawn to a lineup of flavored vodka including whipped cream, cake, and “gummy,” which featured a picture of a red gummy fish on the front.

Then Christmas came and I received both a bottle of plain vodka and five pounds of Swedish fish.  Total coincidence, from different people.  Anyway, I knew what to do:

Half went towards a new batch of pertsovka, half went into a big Ball jar with a bunch of fishies to marinate for a few weeks.  I shook the jar and then opened it and took a sniff; it smelled like a solvent.  The color bleached out of the fish, although a few red gummy bears that snuck into the mix retained their color AND grew freakishly large.  I believe this is known as “science.”

Yesterday I strained the liquid through a coffee filter (still oddly viscous afterwards) and brought it for people to sample.  There was a divide between folks who loved its candy weirdness and people who couldn’t get over the similarity to cough syrup.  I suspect it will be better mixed with something neutral and sparkly – ginger ale, seltzer, tonic, Champagne?  We’ll see.  Maybe.

You know, just in case you thought I was getting too granola housewifey in here.

Here you see some pathetic indoor basil and a transplanted bunch of outdoor oregano. Last year, a ton of herbs overwintered outside: sage, oregano, and thyme thrived. Basil kicked the bucket early, as usual. Weak! Hopefully the stuff we brought in realizes how good it’s got it and goes bonkers producing leaves I can cook with. Herbs are weird the more you think about them. I’ve probably talked about this before, but it still blows my mind how people find, cultivate, and prize smelly specific-tasting plants.

This corner of the counter has traditionally been a twilight zone of overflow drying dishes, random thermoses, kombucha culturing, and a plant or two. I made the executive decision to turn it over to the plants:

In the largest pot in back are rosemary, sage, and thyme. To the right of that is some lavender that had been totally hidden under our huge parsley bush. To the left of the lavender is chocolate mint. And in the front are two pointless houseplants: some ridiculously hardy succulent type thing that I haven’t managed to kill and desperately needed repotting and thinning which I’d been putting off until yesterday, and that pineapple. Hopefully someday the pineapple plant will produce a pineapple fruit and I will no longer consider it useless.

Yesterday was 40s and drizzling. Here’s today:

Eurgh! As you might notice, the shed still needs to be sided. Otherwise, it’s pretty much complete and we’ve begun storing things in it: bikes, garden stuff, skis, tools, and sleds. From here on out it’s goodnight garden, see you in the spring.

Meanwhile, since when K. is home there’s a lot of organizational energy on the loose, we moved some stuff around. My studio is no longer right here:

Instead, we moved it into the catchall spare bedroom/storage/hobby stash room and put in some sweet new storage. This is why living above a furniture store comes in very handy:

I made N. help me wrangle that thing up the stairs this morning and boy was that a spectacle. Somehow he got his foot wedged behind it and a stair in an impossible way and the doors kept banging open. Luckily I held the whole enterprise together with my superhuman strength and resolve and here it sits in the kitchen, being useful.

What is it full of? Cookbooks!

Yeah! Now the myriad useful spaces in the kitchen that were clogged with books can be used to store stuff like ice cream makers and grain mills. And big glass jars full of lentils.

The books are vaguely organized by subject, which is my M.O. Can you spot the bread/baking section? The stash of plastic-bound community cookbooks? And the ubiquitous marker of my particular social tribe, the Moosewood cookbook? (Buddy L. who hails from Ithaca says Moosewood the restaurant is overrated these days. I’ve never been, but paging through that cookbook the summer after graduating was my primary form of entertainment. We didn’t have TV or internet in that house, we had to make our own fun.)

AND the kitchen armoire has drawers underneath. What would you put in the drawers of your kitchen armoire? Someone tell me!

Even if our tree is currently a mishmash of the random stuff our families have put aside for us, I still have definite opinions about how to decorate a tree.  Actually our current setup fits my personal aesthetic pretty well since Christmas decorating is all about kitsch and cheesiness and Ye Olden Tymes and awkwardly sincere cheer.  And since this is my blog, I am going to tell you how to live your life.  The rules to Christmas trees are as follows:

1. The more lights, the better.  A mix of white and colorful lights is nice.  White lights have to be included for the tree to look “classy.”  If you’re going really classy, nix the colorful lights.  You will note that our tree is less classy and more Kitschmas.  When you have put literally all of the lights you own on the tree, stand back and squint.  Or have someone across the room squint and direct you to the light-free parts of the tree so you can reposition lights so they’re more or less evenly distributed.  This was a capital-P Process with our family tree, growing up.  I used icicle lights on this tree, which is cheating.

2. Base layer.  This includes things like tinsel, garland, and plain glass globe ornaments.  Having an evenly distributed base is key to an even-looking tree, if you’re into that.  My mom’s trick is to hang a metric ton of gold globes all over the tree before putting the rest of the ornaments on – they reflect light all over the place and tie the whole thing together.  Our base layer is glass bead garland, fake icicles, and some red birds perched on branches.

3. Every ornament you own must go on the tree.  If there are some you don’t love, put them around the sides… or the back.  Or make a classy tree and a “kids tree” if you want something nice-looking where guests will see it and the family crap on a hidden shrub.  Either way, cramming as much stuff as possible onto the tree will make it a lot better looking.  As the years roll on and people keep gifting you with ornaments, you should be able to pack a tree no problem.  And even if a particular ornament is aesthetically horrifying to you, it probably still holds sentimental value.  I mean, you obviously didn’t buy it for yourself…?

4. Strategery.  Put light-reflecting ornaments behind and below lights, so they can shine out from the depths of the tree.  Put transparent glass ornaments right in front of lights so they can twinkle.  Put delicate stars and angels towards the top, put huge felt reindeer and pinecone wreaths towards the bottom on the bigger branches.  Don’t have clumps of like ornaments – try to space out the clothespin nutcrackers.  Unless you’re me as a child and have to make all the horse-themed ornaments form an orderly parade around the midsection of the tree.

While I was assembling the Kitschmas tree, N. was busy decking the windows with plastic shrink film.  We have several windows that are severely old and leaky, so during the cold months we winterize them.  I got to zap the film with a blowdryer – actually a blowdryer we bought specifically for this purpose two winters ago.  Used, $1.  Worth all 100 pennies.

Meanwhile, K. was catching up on bookkeeping – he does the books for the household and the furniture business.  I am very fortunate to be able to exploit his bookkeeping, ability to do mental math, and capacity for rational thought.  He most likely considers himself fortunate to be constantly in the presence of a person who boasts such talents as relentless whimsical thinking, outrageously dumb puns, and banging into doorframes while walking through them.  And who has notions about how to deck a Christmas tree and make seasonally appropriate toasty beverages.

Even though I am an old curmudgeon in the body of a 26 year old, I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to stuff like holiday tradition and so besides enforcing holiday music on all present last evening (Bob Dylan > Elvis Presley > Dolly Parton > Frank Sinatra, in terms of Christmas albums anyway) I put together a pitcher of hot mulled punch and we toasted the season and each hung an ornament on the tree.  And then the rest of the tree got decorated, windows got sealed, and sales tax got calculated.  Another evening at the ranch.

Toasty Punch

Tastes like delicious holiday cheer.  Toasty because it’s hot AND you can toast with it, get it?  GET IT?  Can easily be scaled up.  Quantities and directions are approximate, it’s hard to screw this type of thing up too bad.  See mulled wine recipe for inspiration.

Mix a cup of sugar and two cups of water in small saucepan over medium heat; gently boil with mulling spices (cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, anise, black pepper, orange peel) for five minutes.  Strain into insulated pitcher.  Add one cup of orange juice, small novelty bottle of Champagne from someone’s 1991 wedding, and a generous splash of rye whiskey.  Serve out of mismatched coffee mugs, probably.

Good luck to anyone building a shed based on my expertise.  The correct category to file my shedstory under is probably “But I boringly digress.”  Well, we’ll see if they jack this one too.

ANYWAY the shed.  When last we saw it, it looked something like this:

As you might be able to tell, it got rained on. Luckily wood won’t really melt in water, but we wanted to get a roof and tar paper on it before any more rain came in. My wrist was acting up so N. stepped in as shed sous chef once the shop closed for the evening. We aren’t strangers to crazy nocturnal backyard projects (I think the last one was putting in some drainage) and we have enough worklights to make work possible at night.

You can tell that this neighborhood isn’t as hard up as it used to be because two years ago if we’d been working back there we would have had a few guys drift by and ask for work. Since we were a crew of relatively clueless flannel-wearing youngsters digging ditches at midnight who didn’t have the wherewithal to buy workboots much less hire another human being, this clearly indicated that work was scarce. If it wasn’t work, it was smokes. And if it wasn’t smokes, it was the police wanting to make sure that we actually owned the place.

ANYWAY, K. put in a lintel and the guys framed an additional wall section to form a shed roof. A shed roof is where you look at the side of the shed and it’s a parallelogram. You’ll see in pictures later. There’s a technical term for the specific slope we decided on, but K. is at work and I have no clue, so you will have to use your imagination.

Speaking of calculating stuff, at one point I had to go haul out my personal favorite tool:

Yes, it’s our old friend the TI-83 Plus. I have fond memories of playing the Mailman game someone coded where you go around delivering mail and wreaking havoc – it was like a primitive Grand Theft Auto for calculators. Also being hobbled during the “learning about matrices” part of math class because we were supposed to have TI-89s but mine got stolen so I used the 83 which was fine for everything except something to do with matrices, BUT I have literally never had to use matrices to figure out anything in my life, just as I knew that I would never need to use the skills I was learning in most of my high school math career (an exercise in personal failure, for the most part.) The exception is geometry and trig, which come up from time to time and which make more sense to me because they have to do with actual stuff. Plus people in building have come up with cool shortcuts like the 3-4-5 thing, so other than being able to work with fractions with 16 on the bottom, you can have discalcula like me and still do stuff. Sorry math people, I respect you but I am incapable of ever being one of you, I think. So it is fortunate that my TI-83 still works so it can bail me out when math is needed.

It was freezing so we called back to the days when we worked later here before we had a functional kitchen and ordered pizza – extra cheese, extra pepperoni. On the way to pick it up, K. and I found this bizarre cardboard threat in front of a building. Obviously I brought it back with us. The bar a few doors down always have a few folks hanging out in the front, and they get really excited when you walk by carrying a pizza.  I had to tell them that no, they could not have a slice because I would personally be eating the entire pie.

On request I started a fire in our grill, Christopher, to kill some scrap wood and serve as a hand warmer. Tip: paper towel is a great fire starting material. Glossy paper is a crappy fire starting material and often it’s treated with fire retardant which makes a noxious smoke and your eyes burn. So don’t use the Bingo Bugle.  Another tip: sometimes people will assume you won’t be able to start a fire.  The best thing to do in this case is start the fire and then they will tell you that you defied their expectations, and you will be all “?”  Last tip: Christopher is a great name for a grill.

We burned the greasy pizza box and it burned so hot, flames were shooting out the grill chimney. It was great.

This is a shed roof! It slopes backward so the snow falls away from the door of the shed. Also note that part of the shed has been covered with OSB, or “oriented strand board,” which is that chipboard stuff nailed to it. This ties everything together and is going to be covered in very metal siding, in both senses of the word.

Here are the dudes nailing plywood to the roof. They did this and then covered it in tar paper, just in time for rain to start falling again. Our timing is excellent. We were helping Friend C. pull grody shingles off her house the other week and seconds after we finished the rain started to fall. Lessons learned: always work really hard because it will rain soon, and the more you use a hammer to do stuff (whether banging in nails or pulling grody shingles off a house) the better you get at using a hammer to do stuff.

Part 2 ends with the shed fully OSB’d, tar paper on the roof and most of the sides, and windows installed. Soon to come in Part 3: the rest of the tar paper, a 40 inch door built from scratch, and of course the siding. Stay tuned if you care about our shed or my personal issues with mathematics!

Before we kick it off, I’ll let you in on the key to gift giving: knowing your recipient. There are plenty of fine gifts for people you don’t know well (nice candles) but when you know someone appreciates, say, kitsch and utility equally and would rather get a book than a candle, you’re most of the way there. Also, that person might be me.

Make a gift

This does not have to involve construction paper and craft glue. Can you knit? You’re golden!

Try to stick to things that either commitment-free (like a collaged card) or are awesome enough for someone to keep them around the house for a while.  Above is a stained glass window hanger made by my friend C. with a slide of Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow in the center. Not only is it beautiful and handmade, it’s relevant to my secret amateur art historian side. In other words, it is a perfect gift for the person she gave it to.

This does not mean that you have to be a master craftsman/woman to make a great homemade gift. Below is a Christmas present I got from N my first winter in Buffalo:

As you can see, it is a found glass container N. altered with black nail polish to read, “The Bills are fuckin’ up!” and presented to me as a change jar. It is also the perfect gift and maybe one of my favorite things in this house (might be because it is full of money?)

If someone loves to have people over to their house, make them a guest book.

Thrift a gift

Not all thrift stores are wonderlands of perfect giftable items, but some are. When you find a good thrift store, you must cleave to it, forsaking all others. The great thing with thrifted gifts is that the amount of thought and effort that goes into finding the perfect gift counterbalances the low cost. Of course, some people are grossed out by pre-owned goods, but they probably aren’t enjoying this blog anyway because sometimes I talk about eating food found in a dumpster.

This is a gift from T. and H. who knew our taste as a household and our propensity for toting wine bottles around. For people whose taste is less tacky than ours, there are still good gifts to be thrifted. Especially if your recipient loves pretty teacups or has a VCR.

Something to eat

If you’re making something edible, it doesn’t have to be too fancy. You get bonus points for effort!

Last year I made a big batch of red and green pepper jelly to give to people. If you grow garlic, give some to people who don’t grow garlic.  There is also no shame in buying food instead of making or growing it.  If you know that your recipient has a taste for a pricier food item that doesn’t fit into their budget often (fancy cheese? artisan chocolate? good smoked salmon?) that’s a good way to go too.

Support your local bookstore (and other local businesses!)

Keeping your business local is key in thoughtful holiday-style giving. We in Buffalo are blessed with many excellent independent booksellers including Rust Belt, Talking Leaves, West Side Stories and now Burning Books, where you can find these:

On the left is the legendary Slingshot planner, perfect gift for anyone who still keeps it analog, and on the right is a book that could deck the coffee table of any socially conscious buddy of yours. The key to books as gifts is, as always, knowing your recipient’s taste. This goes double if they’re picky about books, in which case you really should have talked books with them a few times before venturing into the stores because they probably have too many books already (which does not mean they won’t make space if necessary.) If you give me the Hollanders’ translation of the Inferno, you are a mind reader. If you give me a cheesy romance novel, we’ve obviously talked books before. If you give me Memoirs of a Geisha, you are DEAD TO ME.

Something useful

Depending on what your recipient spends a lot of time doing, you can really make them happy by giving them something they need. And if it’s something they use every day, they’ll think of you with gratitude every time they use it. One year I got K. a 6 foot fiberglass ladder, but that’s definitely a serious relationship gift. Usually with this type of person there is no shame in just asking them what they would find useful.

Small useful gifts are nice too:

I’ve been given a few bottle openers over the years and given that we have a lot of homebrew around and throw house parties every few months, these are great gifts and prove that the giver knew the giftee. The bird is cute enough to keep perched around the house when he’s not being used to open bottles with his hind end. Steer clear of “useful” stuff like paperweights though.

When in doubt, wool socks

Holiday gift season is right at the beginning of winter and unless you dwell in the Tropics everyone, I don’t care who you are, can use a pair of good wool socks. There are cute thin patterned ones for wearing with cute shoes and big beefy ones for those days you plan on spending trudging through the slush in snow boots or just kicking around your woefully underheated house. You know you’re grown up when you find yourself pining for socks in your stocking: you might be boring, but at least you appreciate the finer things in life, warm feet being first and foremost. Sooner than you know it, you’ll be a grandma who makes her grandchildren wear thick socks indoors in Atlanta in August.

Cash or gift cards to Amazon or Home Depot make good all-purpose gifts for people you’re still stumped by who already have a lot of socks.

What not to give unless specifically requested:

Pets, plants, an above ground pool, or anything else that requires money, upkeep and/or commitment.

Really, these are some general approaches to gift giving that boil down to: give people things that show you know them and care about them.  Thought > money.

K. wasn’t working this week so we got a jump on this project in order to have it done before the snow falls.  Also, once you get married you have to build a shed together; it’s in the bylaws. It’s going to be a shed we can keep our bikes and garden stuff in so they aren’t stuck all the way over in EL-2 behind a plywood door you have to remove with a screwdriver and clogging up the back entrance to the building, respectively.  Plus it’s practice.  You know, planning and framing and putting in windows and all that good stuff.  Yes, our shed is going to have windows.

First we had to sink eight concrete blocks into the ground. I’d always wondered how the ancients (or anybody, really) laid out buildings to be level and evenly proportioned. Answer: a lot of times they used string and math. We mostly used a tape measure and a level taped to a 2×4.

Then it was time to frame the floor that would rest on top of the blocks. First we measured and marked where the studs would have to go using the magical speed square, the praises of which I’d heard sung by many friends (this shows you the crowd I run with now.) I don’t think the ancients had speed squares, which sucks, except on second thought they were not framing walls the way we do now.

The ancients also most certainly did not have the mighty power of the chopsaw on their side. You know a tool is powerful when, while using it, you realize that the saw would have absolutely no problem removing any part of your body that crosses the path of its blade. It’s got all kinds of cool adjustable stuff and is really well designed in a way that is totally hard to figure out at the same time. Germans!

We laid out the end thingies (technical term) and then nailed all the joists into place. This took a little longer than it would have if we had an air nailer at our disposal. Yep! This entire shed is built with nails that were painstakingly hammered in by hand.

We were talking about how we look back with wonder at wooden structures built without any metal at all, and how in the future people will most likely look back and say “Wow! People used to live in things built out of wooden strips stuck together with little metal pins” from the comfort of their laser-carved space caves or whatever we’ve managed to come up with by the time The Future is upon us.

And that was the progress of Day 1. Sidebar: check out the label on the pressure-treated lumber we were using:

Ooh, it’s “less” corrosive! Pressure treated wood is a little scary and full of crazy chemicals but it does pretty well resisting water and rot.

The next day we added a plastic vapor barrier to further protect the chemical-laden bottom portion of the shed:

…and nailed some plywood on top to form a floor. Also pressure treated, since we’ll be tracking mud in and out of there on the regular. Hooray, the floor is done!

Apparently when a contractor builds his/her own shed there are two ways to go: either say “this is something I’m slapping together in my spare time, screw craftsmanship” or say “this is something I’m going to have to live with, I’m going to try and make it nice.” We are attempting to make a nice shed.

We got to frame the walls on top of the floor, which is a lot easier than framing on the uneven ground.

Working with K. on this project has been very cool because the last time we did this kind of stuff was when we were fixing the building and basically learning as we went. Since then he’s been working with a contractor and learning all kinds of legit skills, and it’s been awesome to be able to siphon off some of that new knowledge and skill.

So we raised the first wall and realized that our shed was going to be objectively huge. While still in the figuring stage K. ran a tape measure up and we decided that yeah, full height would be fine, forgetting that the shed roof was going to be built up on top of that and basically our shed is turning out to be a big scary monster shed. It’s going to be covered in Old Ironsides-style metal sheeting the guys found on Craigslist (see chopsaw picture) and will probably get around to painting? but in the meantime, our shed is going to look mean.

Here I am, helping. We technically should have framed the side walls first but on the bright side I had a nice basic one to learn on before doing things like windows and doors. Note the wrist brace: back in effect! In retrospect carrying around a bunch of lumber and hammering a bunch of nails doesn’t do great things for tendonitis, a fact I should have already gleaned from friends who do these things on the regular (the same ones who talk about speed squares.) There’s like a Women Who Do Things With Wrist Problems club…

Then it got dark. We have a long and proud tradition of doing backyard projects in the dark though, and this did not phase us. Wall 3: totally framed!

This was the point the enormity of our shed became concrete:

We framed the last wall in place. Usually you nail on OSB/plywood before raising the walls, but whatever. This whole thing made me feel a lot more like a real barnraiser, I’ll tell you that much.

Overhead vantage creepy shot illustrating the progress reached by the end of Day 2, taken from the kitchen where I was preparing salmon braised in tomato chili jam. The salmon was a wedding present caught and brought by this guy and the jam was made by my Fancy & Delicious counterpart, T. Braising is my fallback: it’s pretty hard to screw up, or at least I’ve had good luck with the method.

After an 11 hour day building the biggest baddest shed on the block, we were all so tired and burned out that K. and I took a trip over to Fast Stop and brought back a bag of candy and cookies. The guy at the counter was like, “Snack night?” Yeah, pretty much. Here’s a family portrait featuring the seasonal Christmas Tree-shaped snack cakes from the same people who do Zebra Cakes (my trash food choice) that come out every year around this time. I tore into that thing like Grant took Richmond.

Stay tuned for the part where we make a roof, light a fire, and order a pizza! All to come in Part 2 of ???

N. is 25, one step closer to being officially over the hill like me (26 and proud!) To celebrate, K. and I decided to throw a party at the last minute. It was a surprise party in that the honoree had no idea there was going to be a party despite the fact that I spent the entire day cleaning the house and fabricating mass quantities of chili and pie.

Due to the last minute nature of the whole thing we had no idea who would be there, when they would arrive, or if the three of us would end up drinking the entire cauldron of mulled wine without assistance. Luckily by 10 there was a booming soiree, thanks to people showing up against all odds and K. deciding to hook up the computer to the big living room speakers, the better to blast an impeccably curated 1990s power party mix. And they brought Twister!

When I was a kid we had these books which consisted of extremely elaborate photographs of whole landscapes made up of little objects, and you had to go through and find specific things. For an ADD champ like me, these were the perfect books because you could get lost in them for hours – there was so much detail. It occurs to me now that I’ve turned this apartment into a version of those books, with something to surprise and occupy the eye anywhere you look.

Play along at home!  In this post-party scene, can you find: 1 homemade birthday card, 1 batch of yeast-driven waffle batter for the next morning, 4 empties, 6 fulls, the 1 remaining 4 Loko in the house (thank goodness they’re almost gone,) 1 octopus earring from my grandmother’s stash of costume jewelry, 1 impeccably curated 1990s power party playlist, and the Larousse Gastronomique?

It’s against my principles to clean directly after a party, especially since my compadres’ policy is to fall asleep on couches immediately after guests depart.  If it makes you more comfortable to pretend that we refrigerated the pie all night and then ate it for breakfast, feel free.  Those are leftover apples from the wedding, where we had freshly picked Macoun apples on all the tables.  There are still a few left.  More pies ahead, most likely.  It’s fall!

I was going to make a pumpkin pie too because we have mashed pumpkin from all the moon melons that grew out of the composted seeds of yesteryear BUT I didn’t remember the evaporated milk until I got to the grocery store parking lot and couldn’t stomach going back in and having to make awkward small talk with the high school dude cashier again OR being seen avoiding his line in favor of a less awkward cashier, so pumpkin pie had to wait.

Being of French extraction, N. loves wine so I got a big jug of Carlo Rossi and made mulled wine (and somehow he still didn’t suspect there was going to be a party.)  However, he and the guests kept thinking I was saying “mold wine,” which is kind of a gross concept.  K. said, “You should label it” and I remembered that I already had, and rotated the pot so the label was facing forwards.  Sometimes I forget that I am a genius.

“Mold Wine” adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Boil 1 1/4 cup water, 2 1/2 cups sugar, peel of two oranges, four cinnamon sticks, two smashed nutmegs, and as many cloves as you can stomach using (the original calls for four dozen?!) for five minutes; strain.  Dump in big pot with ~3 cups lemon juice and one jug of Carlo Rossi – burgundy varietal.  Heat until hot but not boiling.  Label pot.  Serve in a coffee mug with ladle and a big smile.

Anyway, happy birthday kiddo!  Good luck on that bucket list.